Ryoro Kurojima (Sadao Abe) is the director of a Tokyo apology center. His job is to teach others how to apologize. Ryoro Kurojima solves problems by using his apology techniques on anything from simple arbitration to a national crisis.
Thirteen years afterward, I wonder if those who bombed Hiroshima are looking at me and saying: 'We did it! We were able to kill another person!' They should be," murmurs Minami (played by Kumiko Aso), one of the two leading female characters in Yunagi no Machi, Sakura no Kuni, as she lies dying in 1958, her life brought to a premature end by sickness resulting from her exposure to atomic bomb radiation. This is a story about those who at least initially survived the first U.S. atomic bombing of 1945 and their descendants in contemporary times. The film, based on a comic by Fumiyo Kono, jumps between the two time frames and quietly depicts the sorrow and mortification experienced through the everyday lives of laid-back and soft-spoken Hiroshima people. Only a few scenes of the bombing and the ensuing devastation are featured.
Yoko Mizutani, a nurse at Kikumisaka Hospital, a general hospital, is frightened by a series of bizarre incidents that occur at the hospital. One night, a boy in the psychiatric department goes missing, and when the nurses on duty search the hospital, they find him standing in the mortuary holding a skull. The police investigate the skull and find that it is the skull of the former deputy director, who had gone missing with his mistress. The mistress of the former deputy director was Etsuko Mizutani, Yoko's older sister...
A drama about a struggling young widow with a baby whose dead husband returns to the world of the living to help her.
Yamashita Takako works in the food section of a department store. She pays frequent visits to a reputable local Chinese restaurant about opening an in-store branch. The owner of the restaurant, Wang Qingkuo from Shanghai, who does all the cooking by himself, gives Takako the brush-off. One day, however, Wang collapses due to overwork, and is left with partial paralysis. Hearing the rumor of the restaurant’s closure, Takako resigns from the department store and becomes an apprentice to Wang.
A housewife whose memoir of divorce is selected becomes an editorial staff member, something she has always dreamed of. However, her divorce is a fabrication. Unable to back out, the couple decides to "fake a divorce"...
